The Representation of Antecedents of Emotions in Northern and Southern ItalyGalati, Dario; Sciaky, Riccardo
doi: 10.1177/0022022195262001pmid: N/A
Antecedents of six emotions in two different Italian subcultures were studied through the analysis of their verbal representations. One hundred participants (50 from northern Italy and 50 from southern Italy) were asked to write two short stories about each of the six emotions considered (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness, and surprise). These stories were scored at six levels of progressively higher abstraction. The results showed that for each emotion there is a modal category, which frequently was identical, and some secondary categories that varied considerably with culture. Southern Italians showed significantly more interest in other people then northern Italians, both in the sense of worrying more about others' negative behavior and considering it very important to feel good about other people. Northern Italians tended to center their attention on the self; they reported greater worry about self-achievement than about relationships with other people and feared personal harm more than loneliness.
A Cross-Cultural Examination of Racial Identity and Racial Preference of Preschool Children in the West IndiesGopaul-McNicol, Sharon-Ann
doi: 10.1177/0022022195262002pmid: N/A
The present study investigated the racial attitudes of preschool children in the West Indies. The Clarks' 1947 study found that both Black and White preschool children evaluate White dolls more positively than Black dolls. In this study, 302 children from four islands in the West Indies were presented with Black and White Cabbage Patch dolls. A Black female examiner instructed the children to choose a doll to play with from two dolls identical in every respect except skin coloring. The standard Clark doll questions and four more questions added by the researcher were also individually administered. In addition, 34 of the 302 children were administered a multiple-alternative method instead of the original forced-choice method only. It was found the majority (71.9%) of West Indian children when presented with Black dolls and White dolls chose to play with the White doll. The implication is that in spite of the fact that the West Indies is composed of a majority Black population, the impact of colonialism has left a debilitating effect on West Indians.
Cultural Familiarity and Language Factors in the Structure of Category KnowledgeLin, Pei-Jung; Schwanenflugel, Paulaj.
doi: 10.1177/0022022195262003pmid: N/A
This study examined the influence of cultural familiarity and language factors in producing cross-cultural variations in typicality gradients. Thirty Chinese speakers living in Taiwan and 30 English speakers from the United States rated the proto typicality of exemplars from 10 super ordinate categories. Another 30 persons from each culture rated the relative familiarity in their experience of each exemplar. Strong cross-cultural variations were found in typicality gradients. Cultural familiarity was found to be correlated with typicality structures in both cultures but was more strongly related to the typicality gradients of American than Taiwanese-Chinese participants. However, for Chinese speakers, super ordinate category classifiers tended to be correlated with typicality gradients, particularly for those categories in which the familiarity and typicality relationships were low. It is concluded that language structure may moderate the influence of other important variables in producing cross-cultural variation in category structures.
Dimensions of DistressSiegert, Richard J.; Chung, Rita Chi-Ying
doi: 10.1177/0022022195262004pmid: N/A
A brief 20-item measure of psychological distress, the GHQ20, was administered to three diverse ethnic groups, which included Chinese, Filipino, and Maori subjects. The FACTOREP method was employed to see if the previously reported four-factor structure of the GHQ20 could then be replicated. The four-factor structure was clearly replicated across the three groups. It is suggested that this measure may be useful for future cross-cultural studies in which a brief symptom measure yielding information on several different dimensions of distress is required.
Self-Serving Biases and Self-Satisfaction in East Versus West German StudentsHannover, Bettina
doi: 10.1177/0022022195262005pmid: N/A
Oettingen and Seligman, in their 1990 study, found more behavioral expressions of depression in East than in West Berliners. On the basis of their findings, we assumed that(a) East Germans are less likely to show self-serving biases when judging personal performances than West Germans and that (b) the absence of positively biased judgments would produce lower self-satisfaction in East than in West Germans. In a questionnaire study, we found more accurate self-related judgments in East than in West German students. This difference was especially pronounced in students who had obtained negative performance feedback. Further, West German students were found to be more self-satisfied than East German students. This difference was partly due to a lack of judgmental distortions in the East German students.
The Social Regulation of Emotions in Jealousy SituationsZammuner, Vanda L.; Fischer, Agneta H.
doi: 10.1177/0022022195262006pmid: N/A
Potential discrepancies between felt and communicated emotions elicited by two typical antecedents of jealousy that varied in terms of their seriousness were studied by means of a structured questionnaire. Italian (N = 301) and Dutch (N = 262) men and women attributed felt and shared emotions to a story protagonist. The emotions investigated included jealousy, anger, anxiety, sadness, insecurity, surprise, embarrassment, irritation, disgust, frustration, and depression. Event seriousness and nationality influenced the felt intensity of most emotions; sex influenced the intensity of only a few. Significant discrepancies between felt and shared emotions occurred for several emotions; jealousy was regulated by all respondents, and by Dutch subjects more than by Italians. Nation and sex significantly influenced the direction and magnitude of several observed discrep-ancies for one of the two antecedents only. The results supported our predictions that the ever bal communication of feelings about jealousy situations is subject to regulation. It is suggested that regulation is influenced by culture-specific norms and beliefs about social and personal implications of a given emotion.
Attributions and DiscriminationMoghaddam, Fathali M.; Taylor, Donald M.; Lambert, Wallace E.; Schmidt, Amy E.
doi: 10.1177/0022022195262007pmid: N/A
This study examined the self-protective role of social attributions by comparing attributions made to the self, one's ethnic group and to factors external to oneself, and to one's ethnic group. Respondents were lower or middle-class White, Black, or Hispanic mothers living in Miami. When presented with the hypothetical case where they person-ally were successful in improving their employment status, all groups attributed success to the self. In the case of failure, the lower class Whites were the only group that attributed the failure to themselves personally; the middle-class Blacks attributed failure mainly to ethnic group membership (discrimination), the lower class Blacks to both group membership and factors external to individuals or groups, and the middle-class Whites exclusively to factors external to individuals or groups.